


An Ocean Between

by spitecentral



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Autism, Autistic Character, Autistic Kaldur, Character Study, Gen, Kaldur-centric, Self-Acceptance, Written by an Autistic Author, everyone makes appearances but it's like... very short, internalized ableism, not gonna lie I have no clue how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 04:56:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13069596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spitecentral/pseuds/spitecentral
Summary: Pretending to be normal has always been hard, and as the years go on, it just gets harder.Or: Kaldur is autistic, and it takes him a while to figure it out, but he has always known he was different.





	An Ocean Between

**Author's Note:**

> *arrives four years late to the fandom with Starbucks* 'sup everyone I come bringing autistic headcanons
> 
> Okay so not gonna lie, I'm really, really proud of this one. My main goal with this fic was showing the loneliness and anxiety that comes with having to pass as a neurotypical in public, without having any clue what is 'wrong' with you. In addition, I also wanted to write something that mixed my headcanon with Kaldur's canon personality as natural as possible, and I think I succeeded very well on both fronts! While it's not perfect and leaves out a lot of autistic traits (special interests, for example), I think I managed to make everything flow pretty natural and I'm really proud of that!
> 
> Warning for internalized ableism. There isn't much that I can specifically point to, but the entire mindset of needing to be 'normal' is pretty toxic. Specific warning for the phrase 'mentally wrong', though.
> 
> Also I have precisely no knowledge of the comics, so this is based solely on what I picked up from the cartoon.

When he first came to the surface world, King Orin had asked Kaldur if he wanted to share his apartment.

“After all, you’re still young,” he had said with a smile. Kaldur had made absolutely sure that he stood straight, his hands and feet still, before he answered.

“Thank you, my king,” he said, trying to remember his etiquette lessons from the Conservatory, “But if it’s no problem to you, I would rather have my own home.”

King Orin had nodded, and patted him on the shoulder. “Of course it’s no problem, my boy,” he’d said, and then, with a grin, “And you know you’re allowed to look me in the eye?”

Kaldur realized belatedly that he’d been staring at his own feet. He straightened his head with abruptly.

Though the brown eyes held no hostility, he barely suppressed a flinch.

Orin laughed heartedly. “No need to be so scared. I’m not just your king now. I’m your partner, and I respect you as you respect me.”

Kaldur managed a quiet smile, but checked his posture once more.

His fingers were drumming.

He lay his hand flat against leg.

“Of course, my king.”

\---

The reason he’d asked for his own apartment was that being among people (Atlanteans and Humans alike) was exhausting.

Kaldur felt bad for feeling that way, but it was true. It was exhausting to be around people, even people he liked. It was exhausting to listen to their loud voices, it was exhausting to check his posture every couple of minutes to make sure that he wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary, it was exhausting to choose his words so carefully, and it was exhausting to constantly worry about doing the wrong thing.

Because of this, making friends had always been difficult to him. People had tried, sometimes, but he had always kept them at an arm’s length, too afraid of getting close and risking them growing to dislike him.

Tula had been the first to break through his walls, and Garth had followed shortly after, because Garth and Tula had always been a package deal. Soon after, he was also included. He felt more free with them than he felt with anyone else, and he clung to them (perhaps a bit too tightly).

But even with them, he was different.

“Why do you do that?” Tula had asked him.

He stared at her blankly. “Do what?”

“This,” she blew a string of bubbles from her mouth, “you always do that when you seem happy.”

Garth nodded. “Yes. Sometimes your markings glow, too. It’s kind of cute.”

Despite the kind words, Kaldur felt a stab of panic, laughed awkwardly, and changed the subject.

He was more careful, after that.

\---

Kaldur did not feel at home in the surface world. King Orin had warned him for this.

“It will be strange, in the beginning,” he’d said. “But you’ll get used to the food, the sky, the weather, and of course, the customs. Just give it time.”

Kaldur highly doubted that he’d ever get used to the customs, but that was okay. He’d never gotten used to the customs in Atlantis, yet he could feel at home amongst the ocean, listening to the far-off songs of whales and Tula’s laughter.

Up here, there were no whales, and he had no friends to speak of. The sound of cars was almost as loud as the music the stores played, and unlike the ocean, there was no lonely reef to hide in when the never-ending sounds got too loud. The best he could do was his apartment, and even in there, he could still hear the honking, still hear the screaming, still hear the ambulance cries.

Another thing that assaulted him were the smells. King Orin hadn’t warned him for that. In the surface world, smells were so much more potent than in Atlantis. Whereas at home the water would muffle most odors, here, in the open air, they had free reign. It took all Kaldur had not to press his hands to his nose whenever a car came by, and once, he had to actually duck out of a store because the air-conditioning was making him nauseous. The only way he could stand to be in his own apartment, which naturally had a chemical smell that made him want to cry, was if he always had a scented candle on. Thank Poseidon that fire actually worked, here.

But his troubles with smells and sounds were small compared to his trouble with the customs. Granted, he had never been good at them either in Atlantis. At the Conservatory, he had often been teased or even punished for his strange habits, unusual speech, and off-kilter body language. While not all of his peers despised them, even the friendliest were intimidated by - what he had been told was - his stoic, practically unchanging expression.

He had slowly learned how to mimic his peers’ behavior, not because it made sense, but because it had been necessary for him to connect with others. While he didn’t entirely understand the customs of Atlantis, they were familiar to him, and he knew how to fake them, at least.

Here, in the surface world, everything was new. It was like being a kid again, and trying his best to copy the children in his class again without being seen. At first, he flinched whenever he was clearly in the wrong, not moving enough, talking too loud or too quietly, or moving too much. But he couldn’t help it. All the time he’d worked on understanding his peers in Atlantis seemed wasted up here, where everything was different once again.

But, at the same time, he had to admit that it was... easier, somehow. He was different, visibly different. People saw his gills and unusual tattoos and, if he didn’t get an expression, they explained it to him. They weren’t nice, exactly, and he’d met his fair share of rude or downright hostile people, but most of the time, once they grasped that he wasn’t from here, they were willing to help him understand their customs. They let him get away with failing, whereas in Atlantis he would’ve been picked out and hurt (directly or indirectly) for behaving the way he did.

It was easier, and he couldn’t help but wish that people had explained things in Atlantis the way they did here.

\---

He wasn’t as close with his new team as he’d been with Garth and Tula, but he loved them nonetheless, even if he was fairly sure that they’d give him a heart attack sooner or later.

Somehow, Robin seemed to have escalated what should’ve been a sparring session into a full-on superhero war. Black Canary was nowhere in sight, and so it was his job to keep everyone from murdering each other.

But he had to admit that he was having a bit too much fun for that.

He narrowly dodged one of Artemis’s arrows, only to slam into Rocket’s barrier. On the side, Zatanna seemed to be busy turning Kid Flash’s legs to mush, Superboy was fighting the barrier he had been trapped inside earlier, and as usual, Robin was nowhere to be found, but batarangs seemed to be stoking Miss Martian from all sides, though that was the only advantage the boys had over the girls.

“Had enough yet, fishboy?” Raquel grinned at him.

In response, she got doused by water as he jumped out of the barrier before it could close in on him.

“Not nearly,” he replied mildly, watching her sputter like a fish.

Moments like this were his favorite. His mind focused on the ‘battle’ ahead, but no real danger to his teammates. Just them, laughing, having fun, together.

Of course, that was the moment Black Canary decided to show up and bring everyone to order.

As they left the training room, laughing, bumping shoulders with each other, Wally suddenly stopped in front of him, curious.

“Hey dude, what are your tattoos doing?”

Kaldur looked down and saw his marking glow in a steady rhythm, pulsating like bioluminescent algae. He hadn’t noticed he was doing that.

He shut it off.

“Nothing. Sometimes it just takes a while to regulate my magic again, after using it.”

Wally bought the lie, and they moved on, still laughing, still bumping shoulders. But the rest of the day, Kaldur watched his markings closely, and there was distance again.

\---

Over the years, their team grew and grew, but they lost people, too.

He lost Tula.

Black Canary was worried about the way he isolated himself, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t deal with the emotions radiating off his team, M’gann cries, Conner’s suppressed rage, Gar’s clinginess and fear. It made him want to scream, made every part of his body itch, and he couldn’t keep still, couldn’t keep himself calm. He needed that distance he put between himself and his team, or else, he was afraid that he’d explode.

He spent hours in the Watchtower’s memorial hall, staring at the portraits of fallen heroes, reading up on their history. Black Canary was also worried about his time spent in there, telling him that it didn’t help to dwell on the people who had died before Tula, that he needed to focus on himself. She didn’t seem to understand that it calmed him to know where Tula’s hologram would soon be placed, so see the formula her history would be written in, to know that, at least among the hero community, she would not be forgotten.

He almost didn’t cry. In fact, he felt strangely detached from the whole affair. After the first few hours of grief, of crying, of sadness, he felt almost apathetic. He went on with his life, albeit a little more detached, albeit a little more empty, but all in all, he was almost fine. Black Canary worried about that, too.

“It’s natural to be in denial after someone’s death,” she said, but that wasn’t it. He wasn’t in denial. He had been to her funeral twice, once on land, once in Atlantis. There was no reason for him to deny her death, and he didn’t understand why Batgirl sometimes came into Mount Justice expecting to see Tula.

He researched grief too, and he was worried by what he found. The five stages didn’t seem to fit him. He was angry, yes, but she had been murdered, of course he was angry. But he wasn’t in denial, didn’t see the sense in it. He did his share of bargaining in the hours directly after, but soon, he realized it would help nothing, so he stopped. He didn’t understand the why Artemis kept saying “if only I had”, when she had retired weeks before Tula had died. And while sometimes he thought he might be depressed, he wasn’t like M’gann, who could barely make it through the day without crying.

The five stages seemed illogical and weird, and like so many other things in life, he felt detached from it.

Not that he didn’t notice any effects. Suddenly, the candles he burned in his house were too strong, too fake, and he couldn’t stand to breathe through his nose. Foods he had eaten easily now became impossible, causing a physical shudder whenever they touched his tongue. And it was harder to keep track of his team, harder to piece the information he got visually together in his head, so that he could form a coherent image. It was harder to keep still during the day, and when he came home, he sometimes couldn’t move for hours, wringing his hands together, humming, rocking slightly back and forth, too tired to do anything else.

He didn’t tell Canary about that.

When it became clear that Tula’s death was only the beginning, and that they needed an infiltrator in The Light, he pushed away his feelings, bit through the pain, and presented his plan to Nightwing.

\---

His time with Black Manta was spent in constant battle with himself.

He hadn’t expected it to be easy. He was going deep undercover, his friends believing him to be evil, his father distrusting him, and him needing to pretend that he was ruthless and devoted to The Light. He hadn’t expected it to be easy.

But he had to admit that he’d expected it to be perhaps a little easier than it actually was.

He hadn’t expected the constant stress of needing to be perfect. Perfection was always something he’d strived for, and he was aware that he could sometimes be a bit too harsh on himself when he didn’t reach it. But this, this was on a whole new level. Now, he didn’t just want to be perfect, he needed to be perfect. Any less would break his cover and get him killed.

The exhaustion after Tula’s death hadn’t gone away, and it took all he had not to flinch at the constant sound of metal groaning in the submarine. The cold felt like needles on his skin, the smell of humans and fish was suffocating, the constant motion underneath his feet disorienting. Everything in the submarine was foreign, new, and that took all of himself to deal with at the best of times. This was not the best of times.

Everyone’s behavior was almost as foreign as the submarine. It felt like being on the surface world for the first time again, only now, no one would be willing to explain the things he didn’t know. Not only that, but he couldn’t show that he was learning, that he, more often than not, had no clue why anyone was acting the way they did. He didn’t get why Black Manta smiled at him, couldn’t see if it was real or fake, had no clue if the way the crew hit him on the shoulder was meant to be intimidating or friendly. He wasn’t familiar with these customs, and pretending that he knew what he was doing took more energy than he really had.

He had no place to hide himself. He was aware that his chambers had cameras, he knew that Black Manta was always watching. He couldn’t afford to let himself go like he had in his apartment, but he also couldn’t keep on going like he had before. Yet, he had no choice but to do his best, to be the best soldier he could possibly be, and that meant not curling up into a ball and crying because everything was overwhelming. So he bit his cheek until it bled and kept on moving.

He seemed to manage. No one called him out on weird behavior, almost no one noticed any of his tics, and so he could only conclude that he was a good actor. But it was beyond exhausting, and he hated every second of it.

When M’gann broke his mind, he was almost grateful for the break. Once he was capable of coherent thought, of course.

(When they were fixing it, slowly, step by step, he tried to figure out which were the parts that had already been broken long before she ever touched anything. He never could find it.)

\---

Eventually, his mission ended. The exhaustion didn’t.

He accepted leadership once again, and it had never been harder. It was almost like he had never stopped being undercover; he acted just as much, everything was just as painful, and he wanted to scream even louder.

Eventually, something had to snap.

It happened during training.

Starting a superhero war when they really shouldn’t had apparently become a Young Justice tradition. This time, it was Gar who was responsible. Everyone was screaming, powers were flashing, and people kept bumping into him while he tried in vain to calm them down.

Normally, he could enjoy the chaos, as long as people were happy. Now, it was too much. His ears felt like they were bleeding, and his heartbeat became louder and louder until it felt like the sounds in the background were mixed together with it, thumping in the same rhythm, getting louder and louder and louder while the flashes never stopped and the smell of sweat mixed with the burns and his uniform was scratching him and it _didn’t stop_

He felt himself sliding down the wall as in a trance. He put his hands against his ears in a desperate attempt to block out the noise, but it didn’t help. Everything was too loud, he could hear the ocean outside, normally comforting, now roaring. His team somehow managed to get even louder, and through his closed eyes, he could see light, and it hurt more than he could imagine.

He tried to focus on his breathing, on the feeling of his hands on his ears, and he couldn’t stop himself from humming even if he wanted to. The vibration felt nice, and he tried to use it to block out the other sounds. The rocking helped to relieve the feeling of metal digging into his skin, which had been killing him when he’d first sat down against the wall.

Slowly, he did better, and finally, he felt like he could open his eyes.

Immediately, his team shot forward and began to yell, and he ducked his head back in again. Vaguely, he could hear someone yelling at the others to stop yelling, and he wondered if it was possible to just disappear from the earth for a while.

Finally, the team quieted down, and cautiously, he opened his eyes again. This time, they stayed quiet, and he dared to lower his hands from his ears too.

His team was staring at him. They were all staring at him, frightened and concerned. M’gann especially looked like she had seen a ghost.

“Kaldur?” she asked hesitantly, as soft as possible, looking like she expected him to break. “Is everything... okay?”

He opened his mouth to reassure her, only to find that no words would come out. His mind searched for them, but it seemed to have gotten disconnected from the concept of speech. The idea of making coherent sounds with his mouth was so foreign that it he found couldn’t.

He leaned against the wall (metal digging into him) closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. After what seemed like an eternity, he talked.

“Pen,” he managed, and somehow, Bart seemed to get that he was asking for a pen and paper, and within a second, he was back from wherever he had been with a pen and notebook.

_I apologize for this_ , he wrote. His hands were shaking.

“Is this... is this something I did?” M’gann asked, trying to sound calm, but her nervous hovering betrayed her.

Kaldur considered that. Not being able to talk was both new and frustrating, but the rest of his symptoms seemed to be lining up with his normal behavior. He had had breakdowns like this as a kid, before he learned how to handle himself, and with his newfound tiredness, it made sense to revert to it.

_No. I believe this is a problem I’ve always had. With the stress of the past year, it just seems to have escalated._

His team exchanged worried glances, and privately, Kaldur wondered how they were ever going to take him serious as a person anymore, let alone a leader.

“Is there anything we can do?” M’gann asked.

_No. Please just leave me alone for a while. We can discuss this once I’m calmer._

They seemed unhappy about that, but slowly, they trickled out of the training room. Kaldur sighed in relief and curled up into a ball again, humming, trying desperately not to think about what he’d do once he could stand to have a conversation again.

\---

There was no way to wave this off. His acting had fallen through and now he had to face the consequences.

His team was worried, and he didn’t know how to explain what had happened in a way that would satisfy them. He had no clue why he was like this himself. The best he could do was attempt to explain how loud, bright, potent everything was, how foreign all of their behaviors, and how much energy it cost to maintain a normal body language.

They didn’t understand, and he couldn’t blame them. He didn’t either.

Jaime brought up the possibility of going to Black Canary with his experiences, and though he loathed the implication that there might be something mentally wrong with him, he had to admit that he couldn’t ignore this any longer.

He called her that same evening.

\---

After he’d described the incident at training, she frowned.

“It might just be the build-up of stress from the last year,” she said, “You’ve gone through a really rough time, and it’s not impossible that it’s finally crashing down on you, although this would be an unusual way for it to happen.”

As much as he’d love that, as much as he’d love to say that there was nothing wrong with him and that this was just the way he dealt with trauma, he knew that wasn’t true. So he took a deep breath and explained the rest of it.

When he was done, Canary sat back in her chair, observing him.

“So you use those... tics to regulate your senses and emotions?” she asked.

He had never thought of it that way, but he supposed that was true. He nodded.

“And you’ve always had trouble socializing? Even back in Atlantis?”

“Yes.”

She leaned forward.

“Kaldur,” she said carefully, “have you ever heard of autism?”

\---

The more he read, the more it clicked.

Canary had given him a couple of website and pamphlets to start with, and as he read through them, he felt his eyes open. His ‘tics’ weren’t tics, they were stims, and they were perfectly normal. Always feeling distance between himself and others, the constant anxiety of appearing ‘normal’, even not knowing when to smile or cry, others had experienced it too. He wasn’t alone.

He dug a little deeper, and he found out about ‘autistic burnout’, something that hadn’t been proven to exist by the scientific field, but which many autistics had experienced. It usually happened to people in their teens or early adulthood, when, after years of passing as neurotypicals, they felt themselves crash, unable to hide their autistic behavior. Their experiences matched his exactly.

After hours of devouring everything he could find, he sat back in his chair, blinking the tears out of his eyes.

He was autistic.

\---

Everything was easier afterwards.

The team was slightly confused, but as he explained, they seemed to understand better, and in time, they accepted. Slowly, slowly, he began to loosen himself up around them, and when they reacted positively, he let go some more. He grew closer to his team than he had ever been before, solely because he didn’t have to hide anymore.

He decorated his house with colored lights, and he found them so much easier to use than the normal ones. He bought himself a weighted blanket and essential oils, and through Black Canary, he even managed to get his hands on a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. The first time he managed to play sea sounds without hearing the traffic outside, he almost cried.

He couldn’t get diagnosed. Atlantis had no concept of autism, and human testing methods were developed for, well, humans. But even so, as he accepted that he was different, he grew more comfortable in his own skin, and he had honestly never been happier.

\---

It was movie night the team, and Cassie was leaning against his arm. He shifted uncomfortably, and she leaned back.

“Too much?” she asked.

He nodded. La’gaan threw a blanket at his head.

“Use this, there’s gonna be a whole lot more people here.”

He covered himself with the blanket. Everyone was laughing, bumping shoulders, and they’d even managed to drag Nightwing out of Bludhaven for this. The movie started.

His tattoos glowed happily, and he relaxed.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun facts in case someone's interested:
> 
> \- This fic was entirely motivated by spite. There are precisely eight fics that pop up when you search 'autistic' in this fandom, none of which focus on my main three headcanons (M'gann, Conner, Kaldur), and on top of that, this fandom seems to go out of its way to ignore and/or mischaracterize Kaldur, so I basically cracked my knuckles and said "well I guess I gotta do this myself". 
> 
> \- Autistic grief, as far as I can find and based on my personal experiences, is different from neurotypical/allistic grief. I tried to portray Kaldur's grief over Tula as such, basing it heavily on my own experiences, while trying very hard not to make him out of character in the process. Not sure how well I succeeded, but hey, since canon never delved into it, it's my city now anyway.
> 
> \- The working title for this fic was 'fish autism bitches'
> 
> \- In case anyone is wondering what Kaldur's special interest was/is, it's the surface world.
> 
> \- I originally wanted to work autistic!M'gann and autistic!Superboy in too, but I couldn't find a good place to put it, so I ended up not doing that. I might make a follow up later, though never believe me when I say I'm gonna write something until I actually do.


End file.
